The Long Read: Defining Off-Grid

Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic. Photo: Cathy Kanavy

The 2016 film Captain Fantastic starring Viggo Mortensen (best known for his role as Aragorn from Lord of the Rings) opens with a scene of a camouflaged hunter in the forest taking down a deer with a crossbow. Encouraged by Mortensen, the young boy cuts out the deer’s heart and devours the still warm organ.

Ah, the off-grid life - nothing like it.

Except this doesn’t resemble anything like the life we live off-grid. True, the guy we bought our house from - a self-styled outdoors television show host who legally changed his name to Rugged Dude - embraced hunting, and while we first toured the property often mentioned repeatedly all the creatures we could “shoot in the face.”

I can assure you, since we’ve moved off-grid I have yet to shoot anything in the face - or anywhere else for that matter.

The point is, the phrase “off-grid” seems to have become a catch-all for any and every kind of lifestyle. But it’s not, just in the same way “home-owner” doesn’t differentiate between people who live in single family dwellings, condos, and so on.

The idea of being off the grid, and who chooses to leave the grid behind has been loosely tossed about by academics, journalists, and others. The sloppy use of the term in turn has led to all manner of misconceptions about what it means to live off-grid.

A recent online CBC story highlights this. The first problem was immediately apparent in the article’s headline: “Interest in going off grid, being a survivalist growing during the pandemic.” Just because you’re off-grid does’t mean you’re a “survivalist.”

I view survivalists as a sub-category of off-gridders in the same way a person who dwells in a condo is a “home-owner.” The latter is different from people inhabiting a detached, single-family home.

Just because we’re off-grid doesn’t mean we’re into “bush-craft,” which is the interest of Chuck Wrathall, “a survivalist and photographer from Cape Breton,” whom the story noted “frequently heads to the woods where he forages for food and purifies his own water, sets up a basic shelter and cooks over an open flame — outdoor escapades he documents on social media.”

For our part, we live in a 1,600 square foot house with indoor plumbing, a propane range (albeit one specifically manufactured for off-grid homes), and all the modern amenities. But, yes, we are completely off-grid. Our “shelter” is anything but basic, and I frequently forage for food at the local supermarket.

I’m not in any way disparaging Wrathall’s way of life, but rather saying the term has come to embrace everything and anything, including its usage to suggest dropping out of sight as in, “I’m going to be off-grid for the next couple of weeks.”

The CBC story goes on to refer to “preppers,” yet another category of off-gridders, perhaps the one that may have captured the public’s imagination the most because of the lifestyle’s extremities.

The episode guide to the series includes titles such as “Bullets, Lots of Bullets;” Nine Meals Away from Anarchy;” and “Close the Door, Load the Shotgun.”

The latter group has been featured in a National Geographic television series, Doomsday Preppers which “explores the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it.” The episode guide to the series includes titles such as “Bullets, Lots of Bullets;” Nine Meals Away from Anarchy;” and “Close the Door, Load the Shotgun.”

(On a side note, the CBC story also confused two Facebook groups - Off Grid Nova Scotia, and Off the Grid - Eastern Canada - and the number of members each group had, and consequently had to correct the story after two emails were directed to them pointing out the error. Full disclosure: I am an online administrator for Off Grid Nova Scotia.)

Locally, in Nova Scotia, a single news story from CTV has done more to perpetuate the myth of hillbillies in shacks than just about anything else. Look up “is living off-grid illegal?” on the internet, and chances are good that the first link you come across bears the title “Did Canada just ban off-grid living?”

It’s one of a number of articles that references a CTV News report from 2015 that has spread like kudzu weed online. The story talks about Cheryl Smith, who “planned to move ‘off the grid’ and into a small house near Clark’s Harbour.” The small town with a population of some 800 people is located on Cape Sable Island, near Barrington along Nova Scotia’s South Shore.

According to the story, Smith told the reporter she was “denied an occupancy permit because her dream house plans don’t include electricity.” The story goes on to contend that “Canadian laws require living spaces to have access to power to run smoke detectors and air exchange systems,” and quotes Smith’s father saying: “She wants to live the way her grandparents did back then.”

Smith actually sounds less like an off-gridder, and more like an extreme back-to-the-lander trying to emulate the pioneer lifestyle of electricity-free living. At any rate, Smith’s aspirations to live without any power whatsoever and the subsequent reporting on her choice have created confusion and sowed doubt both among those who would embrace the off-grid life, and those who don’t know a whole lot about it, but who through the course of their work as bankers, mortgage specialists, insurers and so forth come into contact with prospective off-gridders.

Clearly, what’s needed is a taxonomy of off-gridders, a way of classifying and defining the varied lifestyles of those of us who choose to leave the grid behind.

What I’m saying is, language matters.

Clearly, what’s needed is a taxonomy of off-gridders, a way of classifying and defining the varied lifestyles of those of us who choose to leave the grid behind. While no one wants to be pigeon-holed - off-gridders perhaps the least of anyone given their strong inclinations toward autonomy - it might help bring some clarity to what off-grid living is about for those less familiar with it. And it might help those, such as bureaucrats, who make decisions about such things as permits better understand off-grid living.

Charles Alexander Moffat, the administrator for Off the Grid - Eastern Canada seems to intuit this. He recently set up a poll on his Facebook group asking members: What type of off gridder best describes you. Among the seven options were solar/wind/hydro tech wizard; moderate Liberal-minded off-grid enthusiast; and gun-loving diesel generator survivalist. Although undoubtedly partly tongue-in-cheek, Moffat’s poll also accurately categorizes a number of the lifestyle alternatives among off-gridders.

Until we can arrive at a proper definition of off-grid, and not let others hijack and corrupt the term, off-gridders will be at the mercy of the authorities who, not understanding the concept, confuse doomsday preppers and back-to-the-landers with those of us who simply seek a more sustainable lifestyle, and who hope we can perhaps in some small way help mitigate the impact of the climate crisis - to name just a couple of reasons to be off-grid.

More people want to be off-grid every day. I see this as an administrator with Off Grid Nova Scotia on Facebook. A year ago the group was roughly 900 people. Today, it has some 3,500 members, many of them asking questions about the regulations in different counties, about the kinds of systems they should have, the cost of leaving the grid, and more.

Going off-grid isn’t easy at the best of times, but we shouldn’t make it more difficult. Yet by allowing loose terminology around the definition that’s exactly what we’re doing; we cannot explain to bankers, to insurers, to municipal and regional governments that the lifestyle we choose and wish to lead is legitimate if they believe we’re running around in the woods, ripping the hearts out of animals, and jamming them into our craws.

Nor can we convince them we’re legitimate and worthy of mortgages, insurance, and permits if they don’t realize our alternative lifestyle is every bit as reasonable as any other rural style of living. It’s time off-gridders own the phrase, off-grid, and stop letting others co-opt it, and sling it around until it becomes meaningless.

Survivalists may not need mortgages; extreme homesteaders hoping to emulate some long-gone style of life without plumbing and electricity may not need insurance; doomsday preppers in their underground bunkers likely don’t care about permits, but for the more and more people trying to uncouple themselves from the grid, and still build their ideal homes, they need to be able to demonstrate a certain of level of responsibility so that they can get on with their dreams.